Butterfly in Reverse
by angeloser
Summary: Cho/Draco, a backstory to the weird romance in my larger fic, Gravity


A/N: A little back-story for Draco and Cho, since I know what happens between them, but it wouldn't fit in with the rest of Gravity. Hopefully, this will answer the question, "Draco and CHO? What the hell are you smoking?!"  
  
"Did you ever see me, me absolutely? Me, but all you, but still me?" -Counting Crows, Butterfly in Reverse  
  
He'd known who she was before he'd ever approached her, of course. If her reputation as a Seeker and an academic hadn't preceded her, her relationship with Cedric Diggory made her a topic of conversation across the school, even eighteen months after his death.  
  
She was just the sort of person Draco disliked on principle. She was beautiful, well liked, and an air of tragedy about her made her slightly untouchable. There was also the matter of Potter and his namby pamby crush. And yet.  
  
And yet. He'd see her in the library, studying for her NEWTs, a wall of black hair concealing her face, toes tapping nervously on the floor. Without noticing, he'd become transfixed.  
  
His intentions were never noble. You didn't grow up the son of a top Death Eater and escape with noble intentions. He loved her now, but then. it had started because he was itchy, and tired of his father's insistence that he get closer to Pansy Parkinson. It didn't hurt that getting in good with Cho would surely take Potter down a peg or two.  
  
It never occurred to him that she wouldn't want to speak to him.  
  
He approached her on a Saturday, when most of the school was at Hogsmeade. He'd lied and told Crabbe and Goyle that he'd gotten a detention from McGonagall. It was plausible; no one ever thought to question him.  
  
She was in the library, as always. There were books spread about her. Ink stained her hands, and she chewed on her quill, not really looking at what she was writing. An emptiness clung to her. He wondered what had happened to the friends she'd always been surrounded by.  
  
"Cho?" he said, using his most seductive, comforting voice.  
  
She didn't look up.  
  
He tried again. "Cho?"  
  
This time, he was rewarded by a slight bobbing of her head, a quick glance that showed him deep black eyes. She still didn't speak, but her body language was clearly telling him to go away.  
  
He was not going to be put off so easily. He sat down across from her, gently closing her book. For a second, she just stared a him. He reached across the table, his hand hovering over her face for what seemed like eons. His fingers swayed towards her, like seaweed drifting in the tide, and just when it seemed he would touch her, he shifted, and took the quill from her mouth. She looked up at him, a flash of anger racing across her features.  
  
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Her voice was high, and soft, and though he knew she was trying for anger, it came out more as resignation.  
  
Two can play at this game, he thought, and let a smile settle across his face. He softly trailed the wet quill down her cheek, watching as she shuddered, and backed away.  
  
"Go away, Draco." This time, her voice was lower, firmer.  
  
He dropped the quill and stood up, but instead of leaving, walked around the table, toward Cho. She surprised him by not backing away. He was standing so close that he couldn't see her face unless he looked down. The top of her head barely reached his chin.  
  
On impulse, he bent down and kissed the straight part on the top of her head.  
  
He walked away. "Later, Cho."  
  
He didn't need to turn around to know he'd gotten her attention.  
  
After that, it was easy. He could feel her looking at him from her spot at the Ravenclaw table. Though when he'd look up, she'd be studying her food with a grim determination, a faint blush showing in her cheeks.  
  
She cornered him one night when he was breaking curfew.  
  
"Ten points from Slytherin," she said, in her best Head Girl voice. Then, lower, "Why are you watching me?"  
  
He smirked. "I'm not the only one doing the watching, Cho."  
  
She blushed, but didn't back down. "If I'm watching you, it's because of that. incident in the library. I've never even talked to you, Malfoy. If this is some kind of game, I'm not interested in playing."  
  
Draco didn't answer her, just kept the cool, smug look on his face.  
  
She slapped him, then, surprising both of them.  
  
His cheek stung, and he'd bit his lip. If anyone else had dared to touch him, if it had been Granger, or one of the Slytherin ninnies, he'd have hit back. But coming from Cho, it seemed more of a defensive move than an attack. She stood rooted to the spot, her hand inches from where it had made contact with his cheek. She started to cry.  
  
It scared him, this sudden show of emotion. He was used to crying females only when he'd been the cause of tears. But this. was a foreign language. He didn't feel the normal urge to laugh. He stepped nearer to her, barely realizing he'd moved until he felt her hot breath on his neck. He took a final step to close the distance.  
  
While he hugged her, Cho kept herself rigid in his arms. When he let her go, her nose was runny, and her eyes were red. She seemed small, much smaller than she actually was. Draco felt the urge to protect her, to wrap her in his arms again, rub her back in circles, as if she were a small child. Where those feelings came from, he didn't know.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said. Then, "Thank you."  
  
Draco shrugged. There were many things he wanted to say to her. "You're beautiful." "Tell me what's wrong." "Can I help you?" But he wasn't used to offering comfort. He specialized in causing discomfort, in fact. So when he opened his mouth, what came out was, "I don't understand you."  
  
Cho laughed. "No one does," she said. She walked away from his embrace.  
  
"Wait."  
  
She turned around. "Yes?"  
  
"Meet me somewhere."  
  
She cocked her head to the side, smiling from one side of her mouth. "Oh?" she said with her stance, though her lips moved not at all.  
  
"Tomorrow. The Astronomy Tower. Come after you've done your rounds." He presented her with his best smile, the one that made even the Gryffindors swoon when they thought he wasn't looking.  
  
"Maybe," she said, and then she was gone.  
  
He spent fifteen minutes thinking he'd made a fool of himself, that the name Draco Malfoy was going to be a blot on the family record; he'd be the laughing stock of the school, all over a girl. And a Ravenclaw, at that. Then the door opened, and she came in, breathless. Nervous.  
  
Draco soon found himself not only listening to Cho tell of Cedric, of loss, of family pressure to be the best at everything, but he also found himself talking to her in return. He was going to become a Death Eater. He had no other options, and when he thought about it, he didn't really need anything else. As Lucius's son, he need only breathe to be guaranteed respect.  
  
Softly and insistently, she wormed her way into his brain, making points he'd never thought of, twisting his world like a kaleidoscope.  
  
When he kissed her, it wasn't to make Potter jealous, or to upset his father. No one else knew of their meetings.  
  
Then, in a flash of robes and cheers, she was gone, graduated, on to train under a mediwitch, while he was stuck at Hogwarts.  
  
Without her, the world seemed to return to its normal shades of black and white. When she left, she took away both the gray and the light that had slowly been creeping into his life. It was clear that without her, Draco was nothing more than a cardboard copy of his father.  
  
He became a Death Eater, but he knew he wasn't completely trusted. They could see in his eyes that he'd been thinking about things too much. They didn't tell him about the plan to murder Dumbledore.  
  
Cho owled him, desperate to hear him tell her he wasn't involved. He didn't lie. She believed him, she said, but she hadn't known until then that he'd become a Death Eater. "I need some time," she told him. "Find me when you graduate."  
  
He'd torn apart half the Slytherin dorm before Snape stopped him.  
  
Then he, too, was gone from school. After seven years, he thought he'd feel more than he did when he was finally finished. Instead, he felt a strange numbness, neither joy nor despair.  
  
He spent the next several months moping at home, treating the house elves like dirt, and scaring his mother so badly that she wouldn't come near him for a week.  
  
When she owled him again, it was to tell him that unless he visited her soon, she was going to accept that fact that he loved Voldemort more than he'd ever loved her.  
  
It was enough to get him moving.  
  
She was different than he'd remembered. Smaller and larger, all at once. And more mature. She owned a maturity that he'd never hope of grasping. She was the still center of his chaotic world, and he clung to her. She let him.  
  
When they married, it shocked everyone. Though he didn't tell Cho, Draco often fantasized about the look on Potter's face when he'd heard the news.  
  
Cho went back to Hogwarts then, and Draco worked with his father.  
  
She'd gotten to him again, though. Eventually, he knew, she was going to shape his beliefs until they were more like her own, and he was going to let her. It felt exhilarating to be so close to someone who was so good. She made him want to be good himself.  
  
The night before the world fell apart, he was lying in her arms, listening to her talk of how he'd become a spy, how he'd help them to defeat Voldemort, be a hero in the eyes of the world. He'd let himself drift with her, imagining how it would be.  
  
When he left her that morning, his heart was full of a new found confidence, and he was ready.  
  
Then the ground fell, the sky caved in, and he lost himself when he lost her. 


End file.
